A Black Deeper Than Death (Miki Radicci Book 1)

by M. E. Purfield

  “Wait a sec,” Bullhead says. “Won’t someone come around here looking for her?”

  “Please,” says Devlin. “You really think she told anyone she would be breaking in here.” He looks back into my eyes. “Did you tell your mommy and daddy? Hm?”

  I stare back as a Cheshire smile stretches across his slimy face.

  ACTION!

  Loud industrial music blasts out of the stereo speakers. Bullhead uses a knife to remove my clothes and strip me down to my underwear. I lay with my legs taped together and my hands bound tight behind my back on the reeking mattress. As the men discuss what to do next, I wait to die. But I still cling to hope even though I can’t stop leaking tears on the ball gag in my mouth. Corey has to be smart enough to realize that I’m in trouble and I never made it out. He’ll contact Detective Otto or even Grandpa and then the police will bust down the door any second now.

  Right?

  Bullhead positions the lights while Skeevy Guy paces the room and smokes a cigarette. He keeps glancing at me, but only for a second. Maybe, since he has to kill me, looking into my eyes will make me seem more human than a disposable girl like the others. I wish I could talk to him, try to make myself seem real to him.

  Devlin walks back into the office and hand’s Skeevy a black leather thong and head mask.

  “You shitting me?” Skeevy asks.

  “Trust me,” Devlin says. “You’re going to get a shit load of her blood on ya. You don’t want to be wearing your clothes and I’m sure as shit not going to let you wear a rain slicker. Right?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Oh, don’t tell me you’re getting shy. Afraid someone is going to be jerking off to your body?”

  “No! Fuck you.”

  “Well, don’t. The only thing they’ll be jerking off to is her dying. Trust me.”

  Skeevy sighs. “I don’t know, man. I just didn’t think I’d be doing this tonight.”

  “Dude, look at it this way. Think of it as a promotion. You’ve been doing good work for me the last few months. Now you’re in the big time. Bigger money. Plus, you get to show off in front of the world and no one will know who you are.”

  Skeevy smiles. “Yeah. True. Be good to kill one of them bitches without having to worry about getting caught.”

  Devlin claps his back. “There you go. Now go change and let’s get this shoot rolling.”

  Skeevy nods, smiles, and walks off into the bathroom. Devlin lights up a cigarette and stares at me. A smirk threatens his mouth.

  “All set.” Bullhead bums a cigarette from Devlin. They stand around and chat about baseball. Skeevy steps out of the bathroom wearing nothing but the thong and leather mask. Various tattoos cover his arms and chest. I recognize some of the same prison tattoos on Bullhead.

  I cry harder, making my lunges and stomach hitch and burn. I scream out into the gag and sit up. I plead as hard as I can with my eyes. I don’t want to fucking die. Not like this. Not at the hands of a bunch of psychosexual scumbags.

  Skeevy moves closer. His dark eyes peer through the eyeholes and his tongue moves across the zipper mouth. Bullhead brings him over to a small table displayed with knives and tools. I hope he picks a blade instead of a hammer or chisel so my death will be fast and painless. But I doubt that. I’ve been killed so many times by these guys that I know it’s not going to be painless.

  Skeevy glances into my wet eyes, then back at the table. He must have read my mind. He picks up a large kitchen knife, kind of like the one Norman Bates from Psycho would use.

  Devlin kneels down at my side and smiles wide. “Ready, girly? In the big time now. Gonna have a lot of men watching you. Getting off to you. Bet it makes you feel so dirty, huh? Makes you wet.” He laughs. “Gonna get even wetter.”

  He stands back up and pats Skeevy on the back. Bullhead stands behind the camera. The little red light over the lens starts blinking. “Action,” he says.

  Skeevy towers over the mattress. I scream for him to stop, to please let me go, but everything comes out muted through the ball gag. He keeps his head and eyes down. His shoulders rise up as he takes deep breathes as if psyching himself up. Somehow I manage to back up to the red curtained wall. Maybe I can kick my bound feet at him. But then what?

  A door buzzer goes off.

  Everyone stops and exchanges glances.

  “What the fuck?” Bullhead says.

  “Just keep filming. I’ll take care of it.” Devlin walks out of the room.

  Bullhead takes the cam off the tripod and brings it in closer. Skeevy kneels on the bed and pulls at the tape around my legs, bringing me closer. I scream and try to kick. He presses the knife blade to my belly. I freeze. The memory of Katherine and Fanny being stabbed clear in my mind and body.

  Skeevy caresses the sharp metal over my shivering skin. Bullhead films it and says, “Good. Good.”

  The blade drags up between my breasts and stops at the soft part of my neck. I close my eyes tight and sob so hard snot shoots out of my nose and fresh saliva spurts from around the gag.

  The door to the studio closes. “Would you believe that was the pizza guy?” Devlin says. “Where the fuck is Sampson Pizza anyway?”

  I open my eyes.

  Sampson Pizza?

  An explosion of wood, stomping feet, and shouting breaks in from the office. Men dressed in dark blue uniforms, helmets, and arm bands with NYPD storm into the studio, aim their rifle machine guns, and order everyone to freeze. Devlin and Bullhead back up to the wall and raise their hands. Skeevy drops the knife and scoots to my side. From the door, Detective’s Otto and Hersh rush in with their weapons drawn.

  The officers manage to push Devlin to the floor and cuff him. They point their guns and shout at Bullhead to drop to the ground, but the surly fucker keeps dancing in place as if he’s going to find a way out. When one cop makes a grab for his wrist, Bullhead punches him across the jaw and sends him into another cop. Both fall to the ground. Bullhead dashes for the desk with the weapons and reaches into a drawer.

  “Don’t move,” screams Otto.

  “Keep your hands up,” shouts Hersh.

  Bullhead pulls out a revolver and aims it at Otto.

  Skeevy, knife in hand, dives for Bullhead and…

  …a warm metal blade rips into my skin just below my ribs… then pops out the other side…

  Bullhead screams, aims at Skeevy, and fires his gun…

  …a bullet plows through my shoulder… shattering the bone… and pierces it’s way out the other side…

  Guns explode through the room.

  …with a revolver in my hand… bullets penetrate my lungs, stomach, and neck…the air sucks out of my body… my back slams the wall…my head hits the floor…I’m numb… Otto and Hersh step closer with their smoking guns aimed at me…fear in their face… Otto shakes his head…”Stupid.”…then…

  DEEP BLACK

  I feel nothing. Not a damn thing. Then again, I might be nowhere. Blackness surrounds. No floor under my feet. Just my Doc Martins floating over the darkness. The dim star of light below.

  Harsh laughing echoes through the void. I look around. Who’s laughing at me? No one. Nothing…until I turn and the devilish old man from my paintings floats above. Actually, he doesn’t float; the wings on his back keep him from falling. For the first time I get a good look at him from the neck down. The skin on his naked body is leathery and wrinkled gray, devoid of blood with slight bluish bruising. He raises his clawed hands. Black fingernails graze my cheek. His orange and pink eyes look into mine. I’m not scared. I should be. He’s laughing at me. His mouth hangs open so wide that his jaw must be unhinged and his black tongue drips clear saliva into the darkness. But I know he doesn’t want to hurt me. He wants me alive. I can feel it. Like some kind of magnetic force inside of him that pulls at my heart, pulls me to him and into his arms.

  “No,” I say.

  I shove his hands away. He backs off and appears indignant, like I have some nerve to push him away
.

  Well, I do have nerve. It’s what got me here alone with the face that has been haunting my mind for years. And it’s the same nerve that closes my eyes to him. I imagine the light below. I feel myself drop and the wind pressing.

  “Clear.”

  My body jolts. I focus on the light beneath. I drop. Faster and faster. The wind pushes my shirt up to my chin and my pants up to my knees.

  “Clear.”

  Heat warms me. A sharp jolt snaps through my heart. I open my eyes. The light surrounds. I stop dropping and float.

  Stable.

  Solid.

  ONCE

  The white tiled ceiling hovers above. My body aches like some monster chewed it up and spat it out into a meat grinder. I don’t try to move. It will just hurt. I moan. That doesn’t hurt so I do it a lot.

  Someone squeezes my hand. Until now, I had no idea anyone was even holding it.

  “Shhhh. Don’t speak, my bambina.”

  Okay, I think. So, I close my eyes and let the black suck me back in.

  …AND AGAIN

  I open my eyes. A man in a white lab coat stands at the foot of the bed. His skin is dark. He may be Middle Eastern Indian. Or from Trinidad. I always have trouble figuring out which is which. A woman around the same age as the doctor stands by my bed and changes one of the bags hooked up to the tubes in my arm. She wears pink scrub pants and a worn sweater.

  “So, you’re awake, Michelina?” the doctor asks.

  “Yeah. I guess so.” I sound hoarse.

  The pain throbs all over my torso, stomach, and neck. Although it’s deep inside - hiding under the surface of pain meds - I know it’s there.

  “Almost lost you,” he says. “Your heart stopped a few times. Once in the ambulance and again in the ER. I’m glad you came back.”

  I nod.

  “You are at the Cabrini Medical Center. Although you were not harmed at the scene of an arrest, your body has suffered some interior bruising on the stomach, lungs, and heart that match a few fractures and skin wounds. You’re breathing better and there’s no blood in your urine, so you seem to be healing nicely.”

  “My shoulder hurts, too.”

  “Yes. X rays have found a bone fracture there.”

  “Swell.”

  “Surely you must have suffered a vicious attack. But there’s a mystery to your wounds. You have internal injuries, but your skin has not been severely damaged,” the doctor says. “But…the placement of your wounds match the same ones of the Officer and the man who was shot at the scene.”

  Wait. An officer was shot? No, just the scumbags were. Unless Skeevey was a cop.

  I nod and say. “Uh huh.”

  The doctor flinches. “And you are not surprised by this?”

  I shake my head, too tired to talk now.

  “Neither was your grandfather.” The doctor sighs.

  “I think I would like to sleep now.”

  The blackness takes me before I can hear him respond.

  TONGUE LASHING

  I wake up and turn my head. Grandpa Blaise sits in the chair next to me. He’s still holding my hand. He smiles with his puffy red eyes. Corey lounges in a chair next to him and he doesn’t look much better. I sigh and realize what I must have put them through. I avoid their eyes, not able to handle their pain.

  “I told you it wasn’t a good idea,” Corey says.

  I chuckle and quickly regret it. Pain explodes through my body.

  Grandpa throws Corey a dirty look. “Why you have to do that, huh?”

  Corey smiles.

  “Where am I?” I ask.

  “Cabrini hospital,” says Grandpa.

  That’s right. Someone else told me that before.

  A curtain divides the room. My secret roommate watches a game show on his television. At least I got the window side even though it looks out to another building.

  “What happened? Am I all right?” I ask.

  “You’re going to be fine. You have some interior bruising that the doctor can’t explain,” Grandpa says. “But I’m sure you know why.”

  “That guy you were in the room with was made into Swiss cheese,” Corey says.

  “Ohhhhh God. I remember,” I moan.

  “I remember your Uncle Tony had a similar experience. Stupid kid, then.” Grandpa shakes his head and then rubs his red eyes. “I hope to God you don’t follow in his footsteps.”

  “Jeez, Grandpa. I was not hanging out with criminals like Uncle Tony was. I was trying to…shit, I don’t know.”

  “I know what you were trying to do. Corey told me,” Grandpa whispers. “On one hand, I am proud of you for giving a damn about that poor girl who was murdered. On the other, I am mad at you for thinking you are better than the police.”

  I sigh and wipe the tears from my eyes. I manage to keep the choking in my throat from turning into a sob. “I’m sorry.”

  Grandpa pats and kisses my hand. “I know. I know. I’m just so happy that you’re all right now.”

  “Knock knock.” Detective Otto stands at the divided curtain. I smile at him, making him smile back. “My hero.”

  His lower lip rises, making him frown. He then smiles at Grandpa and Corey and asks for a moment alone, police business. They move out of their chairs.

  “Need anything from downstairs?” Grandpa asks.

  “Um, don’t you think we should be trying to get her out of here and not prolong her stay?” Corey asks.

  Grandpa pushes Corey out of the room and curses him off in Italian.

  I grin and start to miss them.

  Detective Otto sits down in the chair next to my bed. “How are you feeling, Miki?”

  “Like I was stabbed and shot up by cops.”

  He nods. “Must hurt.”

  “Morphine would feel good right about now. But I think they have me on prescribed Tylenol.”

  “Good.” He stares right into my eyes. For the first time he expresses anger, and I don’t know what to do. Should I curse him out or take the abuse like a bad little girl. “Maybe you’ve learned your lesson.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You really fucked up back there, Miki.”

  I sigh and look away from him. I take the bad little girl route. “Sorry.”

  “Sorry? Oh well, then that makes everything fine.”

  “I am. God, what do you want me to say?”

  “I don’t know. But you should have called me and stayed away from that shit hole studio.”

  “Why?”

  “So I could have done my job.” He exhales hard and leans forward. “Did you know that they’ve been investigating Red Velvet Pocket for the last three months now? Although we did not know the little Lick the Pink thing, we knew that the girls who died were models for that site. Remember that rise in Katherine Moore’s savings account? Well, most of them were cash deposits except for one check, a check made out by Silver Rocket Enterprises which has various legitimate websites attached to it for adult entertainment. But it also has a few that aren’t so legitimate, one of them being Red Velvet Pocket. Seems like they paid their girls in cash on a regular basis, but for some reason they paid some of the girls with a check. Probably an accounting screw up. A screw up in our favor.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. Oh. When I found the connection, I contacted the 13th Precinct and they told me that they’re aware of the website and have someone undercover. All should have been fine after that until I got a call from your friend Corey who told me what happened with you.”

  “Thank God he did.”

  “No, not really. Because the undercover detective had no idea he would have to kill a girl last night and back up wasn’t ready. You come swooping in there out of the blue and no one was prepared. So if you weren’t breaking into his office and playing Encyclopedia Brown Boy Detective, one officer wouldn’t have been wounded, a suspect would not have been killed, and you would not have been rushed to the hospital where they had to shock your heart to get it going.”

&
nbsp; God, could he make me feel even lower than shit?

  “Encyclopedia who?” I ask, raising my brows and smiling, hoping to calm him. It doesn’t. Otto continues to stare holes into my soul and fill me with shit. “I’m sorry,” I say. “But you know, you should have answered my messages.”

  “If I would have known you were going to do something so stupid as break in their studio I would have, but I was working another case.”

  I grab his hand. He looks at mine. “I’m sorry, Otto. I really am. Trust me, I’m not going to do something like this again. It’s just…I know what it’s like to be at the mercy of these psychos. I went through what Katherine went though and…I don’t know. Maybe it’s my stupid Sicilian revenge mentality, but I wanted to find the guy who killed me…her. I didn’t want anyone to feel the way Katherine and I did.”

  His face softens up as he stares at our hands.

  “I understand that you’re different, Miki. You know you’re different. But you’re still a kid. You can’t go chasing killers.”

  “Not without you, right?”

  He smiles and shakes his head. “What am I going to do with you?”

  Take me on this bed and kiss me while the painkillers are pumping through my brain? Instead I ask, “Have you found her video yet?”

  “Not yet. But we found many that solve a lot of murders committed the last few years.”

  “That’s good.”

  “More I think about it, we might not find her tape. All the girls were killed in the studio and Katherine was killed in an alley. You didn’t see anyone else during the murder, right? Someone with a cam?”

  “I was thinking the same thing. No. At least Katherine didn’t.”

  “Hm.”

  “Maybe she was onto them and her death was to silence her.”

  “Maybe.”

  As I stare at the wall, I feel Otto’s eyes on me.

  “What is it?”

  “Have they searched the studio yet or his apartment?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did they find the long coat and derby?”